Business Layer Group Hierarchies
A business layer contains geometries and specified attributes (for example, equipment description and equipment number) related to a certain geo object (for example, business partner, equipment, notification, order, functional location and so on).
This node follows the same hierarchical principle as the Reference Layer Group Hierarchies node.
A utility company needs to maintain their water assets. These assets are represented by business objects (created as subgroups) within the business layer group Water Assets. The Water Assets subgroup contains further subgroups Water Bores, Fire Hydrants and Distribution Pipe. The utility company uses business layers to display existing assets as well as create new maps for future expansion and maintenance projects.
A business layer can be considered as a predefined search for a geo object. It shows the geometries of a certain type of geo object with certain attributes as well as geometry context. Here are some examples:
Headquarter business layer: Displays geometries of BPs that have geometry context headquarter
Service area business layer: Displays geometries of BPs that have geometry context service area.
Business layers can be grouped logically and allow you to view the geometries of the same geo object from different perspectives. For example, all the business layers related to one application (for example, Enterprise Asset Management) can be grouped together.
All business layers which belong to the same business object (for example, equipment) can be grouped together. Within the group, there can be one business layer for poles based on material (for example, wooden poles, metal poles, and so on), and one business layer for poles based on status ( new poles, broken poles and so on).
A business layer can contain up to three geometry layers (points, lines, polygons) but on the UI a business layer is seen as one layer, which can be toggled on and off. You can also change the transparency of a business layer as if it were one logical layer.
For the nodes and fields of business layers group hierarchy, the maintenance is similar to that of the nodes of reference layers with one exception - you need to assign a business layer to the leaf group unlike for a reference layer.